Something to see here

By Timothy L. O'Brien
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Published: March 16, 2017

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Thanks to some fine work by two Bloomberg reporters we now know that a major Chinese financial services firm may invest $4 billion in a Manhattan skyscraper owned by the family of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Kushner’s family stands to take home about $500 million.

This would be the biggest investment — ever — in a Manhattan building. Some Kushner family debt on the property would get erased for a fifth of its value. The Kushners would become equity partners with Anbang Insurance Group.

The deal would rescue the family company from the consequences of overpaying for 666 Fifth Avenue, which it purchased in 2007 for $1.8 billion. It would also buy out another prominent Trump political backer who invested in the building, Steve Roth of Vornado Realty, for 10 times his original investment.

“It would make business partners of Kushner Cos. and Anbang, whose murky links to the Chinese power structure have raised national security concerns over its U.S. investments,” the Bloomberg reporters wrote.

That observation is made all the more pungent by the fact that Trump and China’s president, Xi Jinping, have been discussing the terms of a possible diplomatic summit meeting.

Jared Kushner, whom the Kushner family claims had already sold his stake in 666 Fifth Avenue to them, is a senior White House adviser whose purview has included foreign policy. The New York Times reported in January that Kushner spearheaded the talks with Anbang about an investment in his family’s business, that he met over dinner with Anbang’s chairman, Wu Xiaohui, to discuss the transaction about a week after his father-in-law was elected president, and that the talks had begun when Trump had locked up the Republican nomination.

“A classic way you influence people is by financially helping their family,” one public interest advocate told the Bloomberg reporters.

If we’ve learned anything about Trump it’s that his clan will test our capacity for surprise, distaste and outrage when it comes to financial conflicts of interest.

The sheer volume of flagrant conflicts may induce “scandal fatigue” in anyone who values ethics and good government. That’s even truer when good-government advocates are confronted with a Republican-controlled Congress that is content to sit on its hands.

Trump’s company recently received dozens of trademark approvals from the Chinese government after unsuccessfully lobbying for about a decade.

It’s unclear whether the trademarks were granted in exchange for Trump’s public recognition of China’s sovereignty over Taiwan. But given that Trump still hasn’t released his tax returns and still hasn’t fully disclosed his assets, there will always be a presumption that he’s getting preferential treatment.

In the eyes of some legal experts, that Trump accepted the trademarks is a violation of the Constitution’s mandate against presidents accepting payments from foreign governments.

“If the trademark has value in contributing to Trump’s wealth, the amount of the forbidden emolument might not be ascertainable before the transaction closes, but the constitutional prohibition doesn’t turn on how large the emolument turns out to be,” Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, wrote. “It’s the principle of the thing, not the size of the principal, that counts.”

The Trumps hardly bother to conceal their conflation of policymaking and profit-seeking. Maybe they’re relying on public scandal fatigue. Trump and his children seem to be saying there’s nothing to see here. Just move along.

So let’s not, shall we?

TIMOTHY L. O’BRIEN is the executive editor of Bloomberg Gadfly and Bloomberg View.

tobrien46@bloomberg.net.

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